The Three Things You Need To Create a Website

If you want to have a presence on the Internet, a website is a great way to do this. Whether this is going to be a personal website, or a blog or even an on-line store there are three things you absolutely must have to make the website work. With out these three things, having a website will be impossible.

Anything beyond these three things is icing on the cake. You can certainly spend money on additional features and services, such as a Search Engine Optimization service, but that is not a necessary aspect of creating a website.

A Domain Name

So, the very first thing when creating a new website is choosing a domain name. A domain name tells the world where the content of your website is. Without a domain name, users will have no idea how to get to the stuff on your website. What's the point of having a website if no one can reach it?

A domain name must be unique. That means that if someone else already has that domain name, then you cannot use it. There is only one google.com. If multiple people could own the same domain name, this would just lead to confusion. How would your computer know where to send you when you are browsing the web.

A domain name will usually cost you between ten and fifteen dollars per year. you lease a domain name from a domain registrar. Take a look at the cheapest domain registrars to choose where to buy your domain name. They all provide the same service, it's just some are cheaper than others.

A Webhost

Now that you have chose and purchased a unique domain name, you will need a place to put the stuff that will be on your website. Websites are made of computer code, and every bit of computer code needs a computer to live on. You can in theory just host your website on your home computer. But this is not a realistic choice.

Instead, you will need to find a webhost to host your website. A webhost provides a dedicated and powerful computer where all the code for your website lives. Anytime someone wants to view your website they connect to your webhost's computer and downloads the website code from there.

If you are building a new website you can go for a cheaper webhost and then upgrade your webhosting plan as your website grows. A popular webhost is 1 & 1. They have plans that start at under five dollars per month, and sometimes have sales where you only pay a dollar a month.

Website Content

Ok, so now you have a webhost which will provide your website to the rest of the world, a domain name, which will allow the world to find your website, but you are still missing the most important part. You need website content. What is going to be on your website and what will your website look like?

Making a good looking and easy to use website is more difficult than it sounds. To get your website looking good you have two options. You can get a program such as WordPress, which allows you to setup and fairly easily manage your website yourself. Or you can pay a web developer to create the website for you.

This choice depends on how much money you have, how comfortable you are with computers and how often you want to update your website. If you have a website that you will want to update often, such as a blog, you should use a program such as WordPress. These types of programs allow you to easily add new blog posts to your site. Once a WordPress website is setup, your web developer will not need to do much else for you. You will be able to log in and add posts on your own.

So that's it. Those are the three things you need to get you going with your very own website.